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RdK’s announcement does not come as a sur- which has a design capacity of 335,000 barrels
prise. Earlier this year, Argus Media reported per day (bpd). RdK has also held negotiations
that the refinery operator had arranged to shut with China’s Guangdong Zhenrong Energy
down its associated utilities division, known (GZE), Saudi Arabia’s Motiva and the Klesch
as Curaçao Refinery Utilities (CRU), as part Group, a privately held international industrial
of a wider effort to consolidate its assets. This commodities firm.
effort also involved the unloading of inventory The Isla refinery has been idle since 2019.
– namely, about 865,000 barrels of Venezuelan This is partly because CRU was not supplying
crude oil, blendstocks and petroleum products steam to its processing units and partly because
acquired from CRU at an auction held in June, US sanctions prevented its then-operator,
it said. the Venezuelan national oil company (NOC)
At that time, RdK informed that it intended PdVSA, from delivering feedstock.
to retain ownership of its reorganised portfolio PdVSA began operating the Isla refinery and
and look for another strategic partner if it could associated facilities under a rental agreement
not come to terms with CORC by September 30. first signed in 1985 and later renewed multiple
CORC is the fourth organisation that has times. RdK allowed the latest version of that
sought to acquire the oil-processing plant, contract to expire at the end of 2019. ™

VENEZUEL A
Venezuelan crude oil exports

top 700,000 bpd in October

VENEZUELA succeeded in pushing crude oil grade of crude, and was delivered to Iran as pay-
export volumes above 700,000 barrels per day ment in kind for the two condensate cargoes
(bpd) in October, according to a Reuters report. received so far this year. The second cargo was
The South American country has seen oil unloaded from the Dorena, a vessel owned by
production and export levels drop significantly National Iranian Tanker Co. (NITC), in the port
since January 2019, when the US government of Jose earlier this week.
imposed new sanctions targeting the hydro- Iran and Venezuela began implementing the
carbon industry. However, documents viewed condensate-for-crude swap agreement earlier
by the news agency and by the Refinitiv Eikon this year. Officials in Caracas are eager to see oil
consultancy show that the national oil company production and exports rise. ™
(NOC) PdVSA exported an average of 711,193
bpd of crude in last month. This is up by 76% on
the September 2021 figure and is the third-high-
est monthly number recorded in 2021, they
noted.
Reuters attributed the increase to Iran’s suc-
cessful delivery of a cargo of gas condensate to
Venezuela. PdVSA uses condensate as a blend-
stock for its extra-heavy crude oil, combining
the two materials to produce a somewhat lighter
fuel that is easier to handle. It therefore had to
reduce production in September, when supplies
of this diluent ran low.
The news agency went on to say that PdVSA
and its joint ventures with international oil
companies (IOCs) had exported no less than
30 cargoes of crude oil and refined petroleum
products in the month of October. This repre-
sented an increase on the September figure and
stemmed partly from a rise in exports of residual
fuel oil, methanol and petroleum coke, it noted.
Most of the 30 cargoes exported from Ven-
ezuela in October were delivered to Asian
markets, Reuters said. However, one of them
consisted of about 2mn barrels of Merey, a heavy PdVSA blends condensate with heavy crude oil to boost production (Image: PdVSA)

P8 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 44 04•November•2021